Details

The monument includes a prehistoric platform cairn situated on the saddle
called Cruther's Neck, between the rise to Higher Town and Cruther's Hill, on
the south coast of St Martin's in the Isles of Scilly.
The platform cairn survives as a circular mound of heaped earth and rubble,
11m in diameter, on a south westerly slope and rising to an ill-defined
flattened platform, 7.5m in diameter, 0.8m high from the south west and 0.5m
from the north east. The platform surface contains irregular hollows from
stone robbing, and extending from the west side to the centre of the mound are
traces of an east-west trench 5m long, up to 2.5m wide and 0.4m deep,
considered to derive from an unrecorded antiquarian excavation.
This monument is situated on the spine of the saddle. Prior to the building of
the relatively recent field and lane boundaries, the cairn would have formed a
skyline feature when viewed from east or west. In this respect it is a
northward continuation of a linear group of four broadly contemporary funerary
monuments dispersed along 130m of the summit ridge of Cruther's Hill, a highly
prominent cairn group visible for considerable distances to the east and west.
In addition small prehistoric box-like funerary structures called cists are
known from now submerged locations to both east and west, while those cists to
the east are also accompanied by broadly contemporary settlement sites on the
sloping beach of Higher Town Bay.

MAP EXTRACT
The site of the monument is shown on the attached map extract.
It includes a 2 metre boundary around the archaeological features,
considered to be essential for the monument's support and preservation.

Source: Historic England

Reasons for Scheduling

The Isles of Scilly, the westernmost of the granite masses of south west
England, contain a remarkable abundance and variety of archaeological remains
from over 4000 years of human activity. The remote physical setting of the
islands, over 40km beyond the mainland in the approaches to the English
Channel, has lent a distinctive character to those remains, producing many
unusual features important for our broader understanding of the social
development of early communities.
Throughout the human occupation there has been a gradual submergence of the
islands' land area, providing a stimulus to change in the environment and its
exploitation. This process has produced evidence for responses to such change
against an independent time-scale, promoting integrated studies of
archaeological, environmental and linguistic aspects of the islands'
settlement.
The islands' archaeological remains demonstrate clearly the gradually
expanding size and range of contacts of their communities. By the post-
medieval period (from AD 1540), the islands occupied a nationally strategic
location, resulting in an important concentration of defensive works
reflecting the development of fortification methods and technology from the
mid 16th to the 20th centuries. An important and unusual range of post-
medieval monuments also reflects the islands' position as a formidable hazard
for the nation's shipping in the western approaches.
The exceptional preservation of the archaeological remains on the islands has
long been recognised, producing an unusually full and detailed body of
documentation, including several recent surveys.
Platform cairns are funerary monuments of Early Bronze Age date (c.2000-1600
BC). They were constructed as low flat-topped mounds of stone rubble, up to
40m in external diameter though usually considerably smaller, covering single
or multiple burials. Some examples have other features, including peripheral
banks and internal mounds constructed on the platform. A kerb of slabs or
edge-set stones sometimes bounds the edge of the platform, and a peripheral
bank or mound if present. Platform cairns can occur as isolated monuments, in
small groups or in cairn cemeteries. In cemeteries they are normally found
alongside cairns of other types.
Platform cairns form a significant proportion of the 387 surviving cairns on
the Isles of Scilly; this is unusual in comparison with the mainland. All
surviving examples on the Isles of Scilly are considered worthy of protection.

This platform cairn on Cruther's Neck has survived substantially intact,
despite minor disturbance from the unrecorded antiquarian excavation trench
and some small-scale stone robbing from the upper surface. The prominence of
this monument's original context demonstrates the important role played by
landscape features in the beliefs and perception of prehistoric communities, a
point reinforced by the monument's relationship to the other conspicuous
prehistoric funerary monuments along the summit ridge of Cruther's Hill. The
wider organisation of prehistoric land use and the later profound changes in
landscape context are illustrated by the monument's relationship with the
prehistoric cists and settlement sites in the inter-tidal zone to the east and
west of Cruther's Hill.

Source: Historic England

Sources

Books and journals
Russell, V, Isles of Scilly Survey, (1980)
Other
Thorpe, C/CAU, AM 107 for Scilly SMR entry PRN 7170, (1988)
Thorpe, C/CAU, AM 107 for Scilly SMR entry PRN 7172, (1988)
Thorpe, C/CAU, AM 107s for Scilly SMR entries PRN 7147, 7302-3, (1988)
Thorpe, C/CAU, AM 107s for Scilly SMR entries PRN 7148, 7178, (1988)
Title: 1:2500 Ordnance Survey Map; SV 9215
Source Date: 1980
Author:
Publisher:
Surveyor:

Source: Historic England